Essentially Screwed

It appears from the reader comments that making some chap stick from my newly rendered beeswax is a popular choice. I figured it would be a good thing to learn how to do because it would be one more thing I could sell at a farmer's market stand along with my honey.

I set out to find the ingredients required, some are pretty easy to find yet others seemed a bit more difficult. I have been looking around for some essential oils for the past few weeks. The only catch is that I want to use some of them for organic treatment of my bees, so they have to be pure/food grade/pharmaceutical grade. I did a brief search on the Internet but eventually decided to go with LorAnn Oils that Craig, the Southern Maryland Beekeeper, recommended on his site. Their prices seemed really reasonable, even after I factored in shipping...however I forgot to factor in UPS.

The day after I phoned my order in I received a call back from UPS, they wanted to clarify my COD charges. That's right, I foolishly forgot about UPS's infamous "brokerage" fees or to be completely frank their "you already paid for shipping, but we want more money out of you" fees. I've always disliked UPS and during that awesome period of time when the Canadian dollar was worth more than the American green back I did a lot of online shopping. If you can ship through United States Postal Service no matter what, that way you only pay the duty and tax. However, if you do have to ship through FedEx or UPS I just learnt something very useful.

I'm my pure hatred of UPS I started googling brokerage fees and came across a forum that was discussing this. One of the posters really seemed to know his stuff and posted that most of what UPS tells it's customers is a lie. Basically UPS will tell you that only they can declare your package and pay for the duties and taxes and that this must be done at the port of entry your package comes through, it's this process that requires them to charge you a fee for acting on your behalf. Interestingly enough though the Courier Low Value Shipping program allows anyone to do this. This is all laid out in the Canadian Border Services Agency's document D-17-4-0. Anyone can declare the contents of their package and pay for the duties/taxes at any customs office. So next time if that thing you have to have can only be shipped via UPS or FedEx, feel free to contact me and I'll fill you in on the details or from what I hear if you phone up and yell at the person on the other end of the phone they will most often give you a "one time" exception.

It's too late for myself as I gave them my credit card information when they called before I found out about this. All the stuff I need is on it's way so I need people to vote on what oil I should use for my first batch. You have the choices of the following, vote below in the comments; Lemongrass, Spearmint, Lemon, Eucalyptus.